The 2001 China-Chinese Abrupt Airborne Collision of an U.S. Navy EP-3 Surveillance Plane
Beth Sanner was a deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration and oversaw elements that coordinate and lead collection, analysis, and program oversight within the Intelligence Community. She was also the president’s intelligence briefer. She is a professor-of-practice at the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland and a CNN national security analyst. The opinions she expresses are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
China is now countering U.S. claims more vociferously with accusations of its own. At a regular press briefing on Monday in Beijing, Wang Wenbin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, claimed that it is “common for U.S. balloons to illegally enter other countries’ airspace.”
A Chinese fighter jet flew just 20 feet in front of a US Air Force RC-135 plane that was carrying 30 crew over the international waters in December of 2000, according to the US Navy. This was just five weeks after the meeting between President Biden and President Xi in Bali during a G20 Summit — a meeting in which they pledged new mechanisms to stabilize the bilateral relationship.
The most memorable and instructive example dates back to the presidency of George W. Bush. On April 1, 2001, two Chinese fighter jets harassed a US Navy EP-3 surveillance plane over international waters near China. The one that collided with the other crashed. The EP-3’s pilot managed to regain control of his heavily-damaged plane and made an unauthorized emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. The 24 US crew members were held for 11 days, and some were repeatedly interrogated before US officials negotiated their release.
Then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin laid blame for the collision on the US. The two sides made an agreement for the return of the aircraft after two months. The Chinese wanted the US to pay for the removal of the plane’s equipment and the transportation of it to another country. Beijing also tried to charge the Bush Administration $1 million for costs associated with the incident, including expenses for detaining the plane’s crew. Washington countered with a “fair figure” of over $34,000 in order to get China to apologize.
The flurry of attacks on the unknown crafts came a week after the highly public tracking and ultimate downing of a Chinese balloon suspected of carrying out surveillance. Now, the thin details trickling out of the Pentagon and Capitol Hill about are making an already highly unusual international episode even more bizarre and confusing.
As the Brookings Institution’s China expert, Ryan Hass, recently put it during an interview on the German Marshall Fund’s “China Global” podcast,”‘establishing guardrails’ is neither strategy nor policy… and is lacking in ambition.” The Biden administration has the chance to articulate and implement a clear framework to advance our broader global interests by working with Congress to set clear boundaries with China. A Chinese balloon is in Costa Rica andColombia.
Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
And it reminded me that when my father, Tom Bergen, was a lieutenant in the US Air Force in the mid-1950s, he worked on a program to help send balloons into Soviet airspace.
In 1954 he was assigned to Headquarters Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. There he worked on a project that was supposed to put cameras in the air over the Soviet Union. Those spy balloons were launched from Turkey.
The work my dad worked on was secret, but the program has been declassified since it happened seven decades ago.
Spy Satellites: a profitable business based on a long-term memory of the Russian wars in the early 1980s and beyond
The ability of the US to track the balloons has added to the understanding how big of a program China actually is.
Now the United States and its rivals have these new-fangled gizmos called “spy satellites,” which can take photos! They have the ability to do full-motion video. They can take thermal imagery that detects individuals moving around at night! When the skies are clear, they can spy on pretty much anything, with a resolution of centimeters.
Satellite imagery is becoming more and more inexpensive and you can purchase your own close-up images of a Russian battle group. Just ask Maxar Technologies; they have built up a rather profitable business on this model, which was just acquired two months ago for $6 billion by a private equity firm.
The report that was published by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence last month may be explained by it.
The High-Altitude Balloon Tracking Program of the Defense Secretary, Xi Jinping, and the Security of the United States
Who are they? UAPs are sometimes known as ufts or their more formal name: UAPs. They are the sudden unidentified flying objects passing over North America.
But China has arguably done much worse. US officials say that it was aided by the work of hackers who stole design data of the F-35 fighter aircraft, and that China is building its own new generation of fighters with much of the personal information of 20 million American current or former government workers. China called the F-35 theft report “baseless” and denied responsibility for the OPM hacking.
Whether the balloon was civilian or military, its location over the US raises the question of just how closely Xi is aware of potentially sensitive missions being undertaken under his watch within the sprawling, but top-down Chinese system.
Roughly half a dozen of those flights have been within US airspace – although not necessarily over US territory, according to one official familiar with the intelligence.
Balloons similar to the one found above Montana last week have been spotted in recent years above Japan, India and Taiwan. The high-altitude balloon found above Latin America was owned by China, though it claimed it was a civilian research balloon.
The link to the broader surveillance program, which was uncovered before the latest balloon was spotted last week, was first reported by the Washington Post.
The balloon signals are an important part of discovering a tracking method, but not the whole puzzle, officials said. One Defense Department official described the process by which the US was able to identify past instances of these so-called high-altitude balloons – what the Pentagon now refers to as HABs – as “piecing together” different clues from different sources of intelligence.
The tracking method provided an important tool as US officials monitored the latest balloon to transit the continental United States, gathering intelligence on it as it crossed the country before it was ultimately shot down off the coast of South Carolina last Saturday.
In a statement Friday, China regretted the downing of the vessel by the US and said it was a weather balloon thrown off course.
Several Defense officials and other sources briefed on the intelligence say the Chinese explanation is not credible, and that the balloon is intentional.
The elite team consists of agents, analysts, engineers, and scientists who are responsible for both creating and analyzing technical measures of US adversaries.
OTD personnel are responsible for managing data collection, as well as trying to stop foreign intelligence agencies from penetrating the US, while they also construct devices to target national security threats.
A member of the House Intelligence Committee said there are many reasons why they wouldn’t do that. You want to check out where it is and what it is doing.
A defense official said the US has procedures – akin to a kind of digital blackout – to protect sensitive locations from overhead surveillance, typically used for satellite overflight.
House Speaker: High-Resolution Communications from the U.S. Congress is Needed to Explain the Shot Down of the Chiral Balloon
But senior Biden officials faced pointed questions on Capitol Hill from lawmakers in public hearings and classified briefings as Congress is demanding more information about why the balloon wasn’t shot down sooner.
The Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications, according to the official.
Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Chinese President Xi Jinping’s knowledge, sources familiar with the briefing said.
The officials spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity, and said that the U.S. has only gathered materials that were on the ocean’s surface so far.
“We did not assess that it presented a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in actionable technical means from the Chinese,” said Gen. Glenn VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and NORAD, on Monday.
The officials told lawmakers that the US has assessed that little new intelligence was gleaned by the Chinese balloon operation because the Chinese appeared to stop transmitting information once the US learned of the balloon, in addition to US measures to protect sensitive intelligence from China’s spying operations, according to the sources.
The cold and deep waters in Alaskan airspace make it less likely that the balloon will be recovered, according to the officials.
Several Republicans were railing against the administration during the House briefing, including one that said that the president looked weak because the Pentagon made him look weak.
“The Pentagon was telling us they were able to mitigate in real-time as this was taking place and I believe that’s accurate,” Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN.”I believe the preeminent concern they had, as they expressed in real time, was the safety of US citizens.”
“I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. Their capabilities are impressive at the same time. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can’t imagine that would be the case of almost anything we do. Romney said he came away more confident.
Reply to the Sen. Jon Tester’s Defense Briefing on the Pentagon’s Acknowledgment of the Chinese Surveillance
Senators pushed defense officials at an Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday over the military’s assessment of the Chinese surveillance, with Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana telling officials that he did not know how they could unequivocally say it was not a military threat.
“You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before and because I am telling you that that this ain’t the last time. “What happens next, we have seen brief incursions, now we have seen a long incursion,” said Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.
The balloon that gathered intelligence over Alaska was not near sensitive sites, as claimed by Pentagon officials at the hearing.
The parts of the balloon recovered on the surface of the ocean have been delivered so far, while recovering additional pieces of the balloon that sunk has been complicated by bad weather, officials said.
It’s not yet clear where the balloon’s parts were manufactured, the officials said, including whether any of the pieces were made in America. The officials say that there hasn’t been a determination as to whether or not everything the balloon was capable of doing and its specific intent has been determined.
Analysts have not found any material that would pose a threat to the American public.
There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source didn’t give any information on what the English writing was in the balloon.
What have we learnt from the alleged Chinese spy balloon over Central and South America? – State Department official briefing on the “balloon hijacking scandal”
President Joe Biden said that bilateral relations with China had not been affected by the balloon incident, despite China’s angry reaction and a call from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin being canceled. New sanctions in response to the balloon are likely to inflame tensions.
The official said that based on China’s “messaging and public comments, it’s clear that they have been scrambling to explain why they violated US sovereignty and still have no plausible explanation – and have found themselves on their heels.”
“As we saw with the second balloon over Central and South America that they just acknowledged, they also have no explanation for why they violated the airspace of Central and South American countries,” the official said. The PRC will find it harder to use this program because it will still be exposed.
A senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, gave reporters an update on Thursday on what was learned from the alleged Chinese spy balloon.
The main electronics payload, however, has not been recovered yet, one of the FBI officials said, adding that it was “very early” to assess what the intent was and how the device was operating.
“That narrative is probably part of the information and public opinion warfare the U.S. has waged on China,” Mao added. “As to who is the world’s number one country of spying, eavesdropping and surveillance, that is plainly visible to the international community.”
She declined to comment on the equipment on board the balloon and the entities that own the balloon. Chinese statements have implied that the balloon was not operated by a government entity, but instead was linked to one or more companies. They have not been named.
The government is giving money for improvements. In 2018, for example, China launched a project to research materials that can be used to make balloons that can float higher without losing buoyancy.
Biden officials expressed the belief that both the senior leadership of the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese Communist Party, including Xi, were also unaware of the balloon mission over the US, and that China is still trying to figure out how this happened, a source familiar with the Thursday briefing to Congress told CNN.
The assessment was communicated to American lawmakers in briefings Thursday, according to CNN reporting – and if true, could point to what analysts say would be a significant lack of coordination within the Chinese system at a fraught period of China-US relations.
It could mean that Xi and his top advisers underestimated the potential gravity of the fallout of the mission and the possibility it could imperil Blinken’s visit, which would have been the first from the most senior US diplomat since 2018 and had been welcomed by Beijing as a path to easing strained ties.
Beijing, in a statement last weekend, appeared to link the device to “companies,” rather than the government or military – though in China the prominence of state-owned enterprises and a robust military-industrial complex blurs the line between the two.
Such a situation, according to Singapore-based analyst Drew Thompson, could have been exacerbated by the level of control wielded by Xi – who cemented his grip on power last fall as he entered a precedent-breaking third term atop the Communist Party.
Lower-level officials who may be able to more closely monitor such missions may not be allowed to make political judgments about their impact or have the knowledge to do so. Power struggles between lower and higher ranking officials could also complicate communication, he said.
“There is a tension throughout the Chinese system – it’s a feature of Chinese governance, where lower levels fight for their own autonomy, and upper levels fight for greater control,” he said.
The outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or “SARS”, in 2002-2003 and the recent Covid-19 have shown tensions in China, with reporting delays associated with slowed response and compounding the problem. Some blamed local officials who feared repercussions, or were accustomed to a system where information flows from the top down, not the bottom up.
Balloon launches could also fall into a gap in which operations were not managed or overseen in the same way as space or other aircraft missions, according to Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
In this case, entities launching balloons may have received “little or no push back from other countries, including the United States” and “increasingly seen such launches as routine based on weather conditions and at modest costs,” Yang said.
“As a result, while the leaders of these programs have also become emboldened over time to test new routes, it was likely that they didn’t get top priority attention from the perspective of political risk,” he said.
China’s Foreign Ministry is off-guard with the recent UFO sighting scandal: An open question to the US and the foreign ministry and to the public
China’s Foreign Ministry appeared caught off-guard by the situation as it publicly unfolded over the past week – releasing its first explanation of the incident more than 12 hours after the Pentagon announced it was tracking a suspected surveillance balloon.
“Because of his personality, he wants 100% (control),” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor, also at the NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. I don’t think he allows for that kind of independence.
Instead, he may have been happy with the incident that diverted attention from the public frustrated by the faltering economy after years under the recently dismantled zero-Covid policy – but underestimated the US domestic response that caused the talks to be postponed.
Meanwhile, Washington may be offering its message that Xi wasn’t aware of the situation as it seeks to “continue the dialogue” started during a meeting between Xi and US President Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali, according to Wu.
In January, a report showed that the number of reports of unexplained phenomena increased between March and August of last year, mostly by US Navy and Air Force pilots. That’s almost double the 144 UFO sightings reported in the 17-year period between 2004 to 2021.
The hearings would allow Congress to find out what happened. The public has a right to understand why objects are flying around in American airspace that the Pentagon and the US intelligence community can’t identify.
The China Rises: What Do You Need to Know Before You Shoot Down a Heavy Object, or What Can You Do About It?
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. You can sign up here.
The shooting down of an object by China was on the same day US fighter jets shot down a third object above the airspace between the United States and Canada.
In a text message, maritime authorities in the city of Qingdao warned crews to be alert to avoid danger and help with debris recovery if it’s possible.
If your boat is hit by debris, please take photos to collect evidence. If conditions allow, please help salvage it,” the marine development department of Qingdao’s Jimo district said in the message cited by The Paper.
Chinese authorities and state media have not provided an update as of Monday, and it’s not known if the object has already been taken down.
On Sunday evening, Chinese social media was filled with excitement, with many users waiting for the object floating off China’s coasts to be taken down. “Thanks to the demonstration made by the US, we must report it in a high-profile manner when we shoot down (the object),” said a top comment on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.
Following the fallout, the US Commerce Department has restricted six Chinese companies tied to the Chinese military’s aerospace programs from obtaining US technology without government authorization.
The object became the top trending topic on Weibo on Monday morning and had two related hashtags that had over 900 million views. Many wondered why there wasn’t an update on the shoot down.
In the latest event, a high-altitude object was shot down on Sunday afternoon by an F-16 over Lake Huron, which lies between Michigan and Ontario. The Pentagon said the object was not assessed as a military threat but as a flight hazard. But it did connect the craft to a radar signal picked up earlier over Montana, the home to US intercontinental missile silos and other sensitive sites.
New speculation and criticism could be premature as officials work to fully understand the sequence of events and more about the objects. NORAD has changed the filters it uses to sift through the data, which used to focus on seeing fast- moving objects below a certain altitude, according to CNN. Early warning filters had previously been set to avoid picking up other objects, including birds and weather balloons, a source briefed on the matter said.
A political storm is threatening after a trio of unknown aerial objects were shot down by US fighters over the course of three days.
The intrigue is also unfolding against a tense global situation, with already difficult relations with rising superpower China becoming ever more hostile and with the US leading the West in an effective proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
“What’s gone on in the last two weeks or so, 10 days, has been nothing short of craziness,” Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS, hours before an airborne object was shot down over Lake Huron.
A craft was shot down over Alaskan airspace on Friday. US pilots were in the air before the object was shot down, and they reported that it didn’t appear to be carrying anything.
Recent objects shot down may be the first time NORAD or the US Northern Command ever took against an airborne object over US airspace.
The recent events in Washington have given rise to questions of national security and political issues that can only be assessed once more details are understood.
The political blame game is heating up. Turner, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, linked Republican claims that Biden isn’t protecting the southern border to the air space incursions and complained that senior officials weren’t telling Congress enough. He criticized Biden because he said the president didn’t act quickly enough before.
“They do appear somewhat trigger-happy, although this is certainly preferable to the permissive environment that they showed when the Chinese spy balloon was coming over some of our most sensitive sites,” Turner told Jake Tapper.
Speculation may be premature. Biden has changed his tolerance threshold for unknown aerial objects after the political debate over the balloon.
Biden, who didn’t address the new intrusions at a black-tie event with state governors on Saturday, has yet to speak to Americans in person about the trio of incidents over the weekend.
The lack of specificity is unlikely to quell speculation or partisan maneuvering in Washington. At the start of a new presidential election cycle and in a polarized political age when social media magnifies conspiracy theories, this odd series of incidents is heaping fresh pressure on Biden following recriminations after his decision to wait until the Chinese balloon had crossed the country before shooting it down over water.
There are many positives that they didn’t get before. Most of that is going to be airplanes, whatever it may be,” said Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.
“What we can’t answer now is, is this bigger aperture picking up lots of stuff that has essentially been forgiven, around in the skies, because it didn’t pose a threat, or is it part of something organized for whatever surveillance?”
There was more confusion on Sunday. Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week” that the two objects shot down over Alaska were balloons, but smaller than the original Chinese attacker, after he said he had already been briefed by Jake Sullivan.
If there is any confirmation that the latest objects are connected to a Chinese balloon, it would be a direct link.
“Going out and looking for something” — a White House spokesman warned on the recent “balloon flight” to the heart of the United States
“It doesn’t give me much safe feelings knowing that these devices are smaller,” he said. “I am very concerned with the cumulative data that is being collected. … I need some answers, and the American people need answers.”
There is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent take-down actions. I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that, and it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made it clear when speaking to journalists on Monday that there will be no calls for Agent Mulder and Agent Scully to make a return:
This particular action, sending the balloon to the heart of the United States was an irresponsible thing to do and a violation of international law. So that’s what’s critical. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that we are committed to finding ways to responsibly manage it, to engage.”
These have been happening before, and we haven’t detected them. There have been detections where our radars have picked up various phenomenon. The equipment they detected was not that well-equipped and we haven’t been able to clearly define what it was. It cannot discern down to an exquisite level of detail what an anomaly in the air might be. And then the other thing is, occasionally we will pick up weather phenomena which will indicate, you know, that there’s a presence of something, maybe a balloon or an aircraft. And it turns out to be a weather anomaly just in the atmosphere. And again, some of this could be corrected with newer technologies.”